Economically not viable, or too rural?

Are one of those unfortunates in the population are you genuinely in the rural zones, or perhaps are you in the economically not viable bracket?

The properties in my road, and perhaps others do not have access to Superfast internet access (24Mbps<), therefore we are in the 10% ‘please wait, buffering…’ bracket – If you look at the rollout project for our county of Berkshire it appears we are in the unfortunate 7.5% bracket. What is puzzling for me is we are not in the rural countryside we are in a relatively low post code number area (SL5), the exchange is enabled, we are not directly connected to the exchange, there are many areas further away from the exchange that has Superfast internet access. I have heard the phrase “economically not viable” a few times now, and while the Berkshire broadband map (see http://www.superfastberkshire.org.uk) indicates we do have Superfast internet access, we do not, and frustratingly there are no apparent plans to provide such access.

Either someone has miss led the Berkshires councils on the coverage, or there is some agreement for not to provide access, perhaps because it would not be economically viable. If this situation is repeated elsewhere then it would suggest that the 10% without Superfast access could indeed be a higher percentage.

Re: Economically not viable, or too rural?

There perhaps lies the problem, BDUK says “It looks like superfast broadband may not be available in your area yet, but it could be coming to you soon through Government and local authority investment.” and “Government is supporting the rollout of superfast broadband across the UK. Find out more about when superfast may be coming to your area on the Superfast Berkshire website”. Consulting the Superfast Berkshire website, it indicates that its already rolled out!

It would seem that because this cabinet and the premises it services are not viable they are considered covered, therefore will never (under current plans) be served by superfast broadband. If this is indeed the case, then the 7.5%-10% not covered by Superfast access may actually be a much larger number…

Re: Economically not viable, or too rural?

Looking at the Superfast Berkshire map, the postcode ares covered by cabinet 107 are also covered by other cabinets which were upgraded to offer a FTTC service. This is why the map says "Commercial Programme - live" for those areas.

Re: Economically not viable, or too rural?

So this would suggest that where some premises in an area have Superfast access then all premises are considered as having Superfast access even though not all cabinets for that area are enabled for Superfast access. I hope this type of logic is not used as a basis for the national coverage statistics.

I get the 10% number from statistics posted on sites such as BDUK “provide superfast broadband coverage to 90% of the UK by early 2016”, and from Superfast Berkshire “…brought broadband improvement to over 24, 000 properties across Berkshire taking the overall superfast coverage to more than 92%.”

Re: Economically not viable, or too rural?

Thank you everyone for your advice on whom to contact, where to send emails, unfortunately after many attempts there have been zero responses.

2.5 years on, my neighbours and I are on less than superfast speeds (ADSL2+). This puts us in the 4% of premises not reached by the superfast rollout programme(s), which is odd as we are not in a rural area (SL5 postcode).

It seems that because our services are provided via a cabinet which has too few subscribers (something totally outside of our control) it is indeed economically not viable to include us in the superfast rollout programme(s). It would seem that these rollout investment programmes are only targeting cabinets where BT can maximise its profits, does this sound like a biased state funding scheme to anyone else?

It looks like our only hope is the governments support for the Digital Agenda for Europe where the entire EU to be covered by broadband above 30 Mbps by 2020. However, I cannot find any plans to deliver on this for our community, so unfortunately, I suspect that this will be another goal that passes us by.